


The Only Way Out Is Up

by ViolaRosa98



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Sad Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 20:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17168948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolaRosa98/pseuds/ViolaRosa98
Summary: Keith is well aware that he doesn't belong — not here, not there, not anywhere. He's run away more times than even he can count, but every time he's been caught and dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the group home in the Arizonan desert. It isn't until Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane visits his middle school and encourages everyone in his class to apply to the Galaxy Garrison that Keith sees a way out. / A.k.a., Keith enrolls in the Galaxy Garrison even though he despises almost everything about it and knows that he won't fit in with all the goody-two-shoes there simply because anywhere's got to be better than where he's been.





	The Only Way Out Is Up

            _“You should just send me back to the home already. This place isn’t for me.”_

            It’s true. The Galaxy Garrison _isn’t_ for Keith. He doesn’t think cadets should have to adhere blindly to officers because he doesn’t agree that seniority equals superiority, and he _hates_ how officers patrol the halls at night to ensure that any cadets attempting to sneak out of their rooms are caught and can be shepherded back to the barracks like cattle to their corral.

            He doesn’t belong here. He’s not suited to be part of an organization that requires its members to salute their so-called superiors before said members can even put names to faces — to show respect for people whose names they don’t even know. He can’t help but feel like he’s violating his very constitution every time he raises his right arm to salute Commander Iverson or one of his other “superiors,” and every day, his distaste for the Garrison grows more vehement.

            While Keith can outfly anyone in the Garrison — except, maybe, for Shiro — he doesn’t fit in. He didn’t fit into the group home he was in before he started living at the Garrison, either, though. He’d realized that the second he walked into that godforsaken place almost a decade ago and was met with the broad smiles of chubby-cheeked toddlers still hoping to be adopted and the dilated pupils of miserable teenagers willing to do anything they think will make them feel, even for a second, that they’re not just alive, but _living_.

            He wasn’t like them. While he wasn’t _completely_ devoid of hope, as were the seventeen-year-olds about to be kicked out of the group home and onto the street with nothing except the clothes on their backs, he lacked the undeterrable enthusiasm the toddlers possessed. It was true that his eyes shone as brightly as any other child’s — but that was only because all of his broken dreams were like pieces of shattered glass that sparkled every time he tilted his head toward the sky in an effort not to cry.

            He, feared by the younger kids and shunned by the older kids, had inhabited a sort of limbo — and that’s why he ran away… the first time, that is. The second time Keith attempted to run away from the group home, it was because he’d found out that, since he had nowhere else to go and was a minor, they couldn’t just _let_ him leave. The latest attempts, though, stemmed from his desire to be anywhere else — and, ultimately, it was that desire to be _literally_ anywhere else that drove Keith to go to the address on Lieutenant Shirogane’s business card. He couldn’t get out of the group home on his own. It didn’t matter how far he ran, or how many buses he paid for with the metro card he’d bought with the coins he’d picked up off the cafeteria floor; he’d be caught and dragged, usually kicking and screaming, back to the bedroom he shared with eleven other kids. It was like he was tethered to the Arizonan desert, where there’s nothing to do except pretend you’re somewhere else.

            The Galaxy Garrison, with its chain of command and rigidly-enforced rules, is anathema to Keith — but it’s his only means of escape from this goddamned desert, whose only saving grace, in Keith’s eyes, is that it resembles Mars’ landscape. If he can convince himself that being confined to the Garrison’s grounds isn’t suffocating long enough to graduate, he’ll be free. He’ll be free to leave this rinky-dink desert town behind and explore the universe — and even if he discovers that he doesn’t belong out there, either, well, at least he’ll have gotten to touch the stars.


End file.
